ARLINGTON — All Karlin Lissa wanted was to go home this week for Christmas.
A certified nursing assistant, she took on overtime shifts at Providence hospital in Everett more than a year ago to earn money for the trip.
She studied for her community college nursing classes at work while her oldest son cared for his younger siblings at home. Her husband, Wadi Lissa, shared the duties at home when he wasn’t working extra hours at a Woodinville biotech company.
It was a stressful time.
Finally, in May, Karlin Lissa bought six airline tickets to the Sudan. The round-trip tickets cost $8,000 — a fortune for the family. She could not wait to tell her mother and Wadi’s parents, whom they had not seen for 12 years, that they were coming home.
Wadi and Karlin wanted their visit to be a surprise, so they waited until summer to make the call.
In the meantime, though, violence in the north-central African country escalated again as the time approached for the people of the primarily Christian south to vote on secession from the mostly Islamic north.
Family and friends told the Lissas not to come. It’s too dangerous, they said.
Though they now are U.S. citizens, Wadi and Karlin remember the violence all too well.
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Sudan has been engaged in a civil war for more than 50 years, with all the various ethnic and religious groups fighting amongst each other.
Karlin, 35, grew up Catholic, her mother’s only child. She was born in Wau in the south, but as a girl moved north to Khartoum to escape the violence, which claimed the life of her father.
Karlin recalls truck convoys packed with people trying to escape the fighting, the bodies along the roadside and the gunfire.
“I remember like it was yesterday,” she said. “There was shooting, and my mother told me to get on the floor. She risked her life to save me.”
After graduating from high school, Karlin made plans to escape to Egypt. When she finally left in 1998, she took with her a baby son, Amanwil Eversitol.
After Wadi, now 39, graduated with a degree in animal sciences from Catholic University of the Sudan, he, too, crossed over into Egypt.
“We put God first. So though we were frightened, we had faith that we would be OK,” Karlin said.
In Egypt they went to the United State embassy and applied for and received refugee status. With a relative in Seattle, it was decided that Karlin would move first and settle in Everett. They only had enough money for one to make the move.
After arriving in the U.S., she started attending Northshore Christian Church, which then helped her bring Wadi to America.
“Wadi and I were apart for a year,” she said. “I’ve known Wadi since I was 17. He is my husband and my best friend. It was so hard.”
The adjustment to living here was difficult, too.
Karlin had to learn to speak English and Wadi had to find a job.
Meanwhile they had three more children: son Denki, now 8, and daughters Tiele, 5, and Bhaki, 2. In 2007, they bought their modest home in Arlington.
The Lissa children speak very little Balanada, the tribal language of their parents, and no Arabic, which Wadi and Karlin also know. The three older ones enjoy their schools in Arlington and differ little from their classmates, their mother said.
The family attends Falcon Ridge Fellowship in Arlington and they keep in touch with other Sudanese friends around the region.
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Sudan is preparing now for a referendum on the independence of the southern region. Scheduled for Jan. 9, the referendum was part of the 2005 peace agreement to stop Sudan’s civil war.
If the south votes for secession, experts fear the civil war will begin anew.
Because they hold dual citizenship, the Lissas were able to register to vote in the election. They plan to vote for independence from the north, but they are praying for peace, no matter what the outcome.
It’s anything but peaceful in Sudan right now, the Lissas said.
Kidnapping, carjacking, armed robbery, murders and fighting are a reminder of the worst of the Sudan’s history.
On Oct. 1, the U.S. State Department issued a travel warning to people planning to visit Sudan, advising no travel in the country. On Oct. 25, the United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office also issued an advisory against travel in Sudan.
The Lissas, who bought their British Midland Airways tickets from the International Travel Network, have been trying since then to recover their money from the San Francisco-based travel agency.
“I am not taking my kids to Sudan if it is not safe,” Karlin said. “It’s heartbreaking. Those tickets cost a lot of money.”
So far, International Travel Network has agreed to reimburse the Lissa family only about half of what they spent on their tickets to Sudan. The family still has not received the money.
So, for now, Karlin is back working overtime at the hospital, hoping that in a few years she can save enough money to make the trip to a more peaceful homeland.
“We were so excited to go. I was so happy,” she said, wiping tears from her face. “I have to be thankful for this country, for my job and the chance to work extra hours. We just hope our children will have a chance to see their grandparents before it is too late.”
Son Amanwil again is supervising his brother and sisters after school. It is a responsibility he is willing to accept to help his family.
“I told everybody at school we were going to see our grandparents in Africa for Christmas. Nobody believed me,” Amanwil said. “Now we can’t go. It’s embarrassing. But most of all, my mother sacrificed so much for this. We missed her when she was at work.”
Wadi Lissa, a quiet man, said his family is lucky to have left Sudan.
“Nothing has changed there. I think of all the thousands who did not have a chance at the American dream and the blessings we have,” he said. “Education is the only way for the people of southern Sudan to move ahead from the poverty and the violence they have always known.”
The Lissas are active in a group of Sudanese Americans who are raising money to build schools in their homeland.
“Working for (the school fund) and telling the story of the Sudan is a way to heal,” Karlin Lisa said.
Karlin’s mother, called Haboba by the Lissa kids, tells them she wishes she could be a bird.
“Then she could fly to us,” Karlin said. “I miss her so much.”
Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427; gfiege@heraldnet.com.
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